The Walt Disney Company is ending Disney Infinity. During an investor relations update for the second quarter of 2016, Disney slipped this terse note into the statement ending the toy-to-video game franchise.
Items affecting comparability during the quarter ended April 2, 2016 included a $147 million charge in connection with the discontinuation of our self-published console games business, principally Infinity
Utah-based Avalanche Software (not the Avalanche Studios that created Just Cause) will also be shut down as a result of Disney’s decision to leave behind self-published games. Infinity manager John Blackburn thanked the fans for their support and assured them that three new characters from Alice Through the Looking Glass and a Finding Dory Play Set will still be released as planned.
Disney Infinity 3.0 was released on August 30th, 2015. You can check out Tom’s review of the game here.
The Blood and Wine expansion for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is coming at the end of this month. You wanted to see some movies, enjoy some camping or sports, read a good book, and maybe even play some new games, but CD Projekt Red has other plans for your time. You’re going to be investigating murders and learning the ins and outs of the vintner trade. The Blood and Wine expansion is releasing on May 31st and it’s huge. It’s over 30 hours of monster-hunting set in the chivalric idyll of Toussaint which is less muddy and grim than previous Witcher settings, but no less deadly.
Along with a bunch of new quests and enemies, Blood and Wine features new loot, a new mutation system that adds high-level abilities to character customization, a new Grandmaster class of armor, dyes to color armor, and two hours of new music. One of the big additions is a home and vineyard that players can buy and upgrade. Geralt seems to have the temperament of a good sommelier.
Players that don’t purchase the expansion will still benefit from an extensive update to the game that will be free for everyone. The developers have revamped the inventory screen, improved performance, added options to disable the fish-eye effect from Witcher vision and automatic sword drawing when enemies are near, and increased the maximum character level to 100 in new game plus.
Blood and Wine is available as part of The Witcher 3 season pass, or separately for $19.99.
Before FTL let you manage your crew on their peril-fraught voyage into the procedurally generated deep unknown, there was U-boat sim Silent Hunter 5. You made the same kinds of crew management decisions. Okay, here we go into a battle. This man goes here and that man goes there. It was all very personal.
Uboot seems to take a page from the same ship’s log. At first, it looks like the usual third person naval action game. But as you watch the promo video (Uboot is just a Kickstarter at this point), the view zooms in to a quaint cutaway of the sub. Anyone who’s ever studied the cutaway view of a ship will appreciate this. It’s all very Life Aquatic. I like how the metal sides of the submarine actually slide out of the way. They don’t just vanish like the walls of your house in The Sims. They deferentially get out of your way. And what better way to highlight the terror of a flooding sub than showing the water level rising around your hapless crew members?
The developers in Poland, Deep Water Studio, don’t list any former credits. So you’re taking a chance with a first-time developer. They cite a deal with publisher Playway to match whatever Kickstarter funds they make. Playway has a lot of trash in their catalog, but they appreciate the awkward charm in the Car Mechanic Simulation games, in which you play, yep, a car mechanic. It’s as ridiculous as it sounds. And oddly enough, it totally works.
Uboot sounds even more personal than FTL or Silent Hunter 5. To wit:
You will see the lives of grey wolves in all its glory. We will not add any colour or flavour to it, even if the toilet overflows.
Yep, that’s uh, awfully personal. The Sims Kriegsmarine career track. You can get in on Uboot’s Kickstarter campaign for $12.
It’s been three months since the release of Political Machine 2016, Stardock’s serious-gameplay-but-not-serious-presentation Presidential election strategy game, which builds on the rock-solid territory control gameplay concepts they introduced in their Corporate Machine (nee Entrepreneur) series. In those three months, Political Machine 2016 has been incomplete to the point of being literally* unplayable. Today, that has been fixed. Because today Stardock released an update that adds playable Sarah Palin.
Operation Dust Line, the newest DLC and update for Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege, releases today for owners of the season pass. Two new combatants join the shooty fun. Blackbeard, who is not a pirate, has a transparent shield attached to his rifle. Valkyrie, a female ex-Olympian SEAL, comes with quick-deployment sticky cameras.
On the free update side of the release, everyone gets a new map set in militarized Border checkpoint which is likely not on the border between Canada and the United States. A new victory screen allows the winning side to gloat a bit more, which is good because everyone has new cosmetic headgear to show off. Players can now change loadouts between match rounds to make their kit as fashion-forward as possible. Finally, gun charms come to Rainbow Six Siege because everyone knows a kewpie-doll version of a SWAT trooper hanging off your rifle makes you shoot more accurately.
Politics, heroics, franchises, brainwashing, epic battles between god-like entities, whether Stan Lee cameos are annoying! It’s all on this week’s podcast. We really put out backs into this week’s 3×3 about exercise, which starts at the 1:45 mark. And be sure to check out the latest movie posters by listener sinnick!
If you’re missing Iron Man or Captain America from your stable of Marvel Heroes characters, you can get one — not both! — of them for free by entering TEAMCAP or TEAMIRONMAN on the redeem code page. While the offer is entirely neutral in this weekend’s civil war, the game itself is not. Marvel Heroes is clearly biased towards Iron Man. I have evidence after the jump.
Electronic Arts and DICE have lifted the lid on Battlefield 1. That’s the numeral “1” and not the word – as in The Great War, World War I. Drat. That’s the Roman numeral. Just take a look at the announcement trailer. Battlefield 1 eschews the modern whiz-bang gadgetry of recent big-budget shooters for wooden clubs, canvas masks, and bolt-action rifles. That’s how you separate yourself from Call of Duty’s increasingly bizarre setting. The pre-order page for Battlefield 1 has a list of tantalizing details. Hellfighter, Red Baron, and Lawrence of Arabia DLC? Yes, please, especially if we’re talking about The Harlem Hellfighters.
Experience the origins of modern warfare where the old world was destroyed, giving way to the new one. Use the innovative, modern weaponry and vehicles of World War I as you battle across the land, air and sea.
Battlefield 1 will be available October 21st, on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.
There are more aliens coming to XCOM 2. Firaxis has announced that Alien Hunters is the next DLC for their turn-based strategy game. Alien Hunters will feature a new, more powerful variety of alien enemy for XCOM soldiers to fight. The Ruler class (including the Viper King pictured above) will show up in your game after you’ve completed a new story mission. Beyond offering the satisfaction of victory, killing Rulers will give players access to new equipment like the Icarus Suit which allows the wearer to fly around the tactical map, or the Bolt Caster one-shot weapon.
Alien Hunters will launch on May 12th. It will be available as part of the Season Pass, or can be purchased separately for $9.99.
Cel-shaded Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is a reality. So is monochrome, ASCII art, rainbow hues, and a host of other possibilities thanks to the graphics filters the PlayStation 4 game offers players.
Uncharted 4 launches on May 10th, unless you happen to know a couple of shady characters from the United Kingdom that made off with a few thousand copies of the game. A Thief’s End indeed.
Do you feel that FTL goes by too quickly? Do you wish it was a more drawn-out experience with minigames, twitch-based JRPG combat, full-blown 3D graphics in wide-open space with a z-axis and no easy way to look around? Do you long for crewmembers who are entries on a spreadsheet? Do you crave a DIY economy at the onset of every game? Do you harbor a secret desire that a city builder would stowaway in the cargo hold and occasionally peek out to badger you? Do you want your progress to vanish without a trace after every game?
The creepiness factor with They Look Like People starts with the name. Who looks like people? They? Who are they? If they only look like people, what do they really look like? Let your imagination run with it. Rest assured your questions will be answered in this chilling slow burn version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers — either one — with a payoff every bit as effective and unexpected.
There’s a whole contingency of late-night call-in show wackos who believe in lizard people disguised as humans for some insidious plot. They’re crazy, right? Where’s the line that separates being ill, being imaginative, and actually being right? As the old saying goes, it’s not paranoia if they’re actually out to get you. How much can you trust the voices in your head, whether they’re affirmation tapes or messages heard on a phone that might not even work? These are the ideas that They Look Like People writer and director Perry Blackshears explores with his cast. Evan Dumouchel as a Ray Liotta crossed with Mark Duplass leading man, the endearingly Tilly-esque Margaret Ying Drake, and an appropriately bland and uncertain MacLeod Andrews.
Blackshears plays it maddeningly close to the vest, sometimes out of necessity. Given the subject matter and the guerilla style filmmaking, I can’t help but think of Larry Cohen’s God Told Me To. You probably don’t know what that is, and frankly you’re not missing much. The 70s were a hell of a thing. So think of this as a microbudget Jacob’s Ladder that relies on sound design and just the lightest touch of effects. It’s a less-is-so-much-more approach to tension. Jump scares? Who needs them? They Look Like People does what it needs to do with quiet shots, badly lit rooms, and disarming edits. It doesn’t have to lunge at you and make sudden loud noises. It’s not interested in how other horror movies do it, much less what other horror movies actually do. It’s ultimately got something else on its mind. Something far more disturbing.
Not to say it’s not a horror movie! It absolutely is. A supremely creepy one. But how many horror movies begin with the premise that greater love hath no man than he who would shave his friend’s back for him? Except for he who would repay the favor to the degree it’s repaid here.
Relic Entertainment and Sega have announced Dawn of War 3. Relic says Dawn of War 3 is a combination of the original game’s scale and the sequel’s customizable heroes. According to the developer, the studio is bringing back mechanics that may make real-time strategy vets happy like base-building while adding new features like “super-walkers” that will tower over the battlefield. With the good there is the bad, and in this case the bad is grim. At launch the game will only have Space Marines, Orks, and Eldar races in the campaign. It’s unclear if there will be more races available in multiplayer, but you can bet there will be some offered as DLC eventually.
Relic talked about Dawn of War 3 in 2011, but that was when they were part of THQ. New ownership and five years has likely changed their original plans for the game.
Battlefleet: Gothic Armada shipped with a lot of stuff in it. Four factions, character progression for online and offline games, a dynamic campaign. It also shipped with a lot of stuff not in it. Developer Tindalos is promising two new factions, ship customization, and asymmetry among the faction’s skills. Okay, so those things needed some more development time, but they wanted to get the game out the door, so those things could wait.
But I’m flabbergasted at what else they thought could wait. From the latest roadmap of stuff coming up “in the next few weeks”:
Online custom games will allow you to invite your friends to matches, competing with or against them in 1vs1 and 2vs2 battles.
And among the stuff coming up “in the next couple of months”:
You’ll be able to invite a friend to play 2 vs 2 against the AI – the progression system will be available in this mode for both you and your friend.
I had no idea those things weren’t in there until I tried to set up a game against a friend. It’s not possible. Okay, so let’s play against the AI. It’s also not possible. The only way to play with my friend is in a 2v2 game against random players. In a game with wide-open custom battle options against the AI, complete with long-term character progression, Battlefleet: Gothic Armada says you can only progress an online character by playing “fair and square” against random players. Tindalos seems to be of the mindset that if I level up by playing with a friend or — gasp! — by playing a comp stomp, I shouldn’t be allowed to use that progression online against other players.
It’s an inane idea that needs to go away. What do they care how I level up? Why this absurd need to expect everyone to grind away at the same millstone to pay their game tax? And while I’m glad Tindalos is changing their mind, it’s a shame that it’s taking them months to do something about it.
